Acylium ions stabilization

The electrophile in a Friedel-Crafts acylation reaction is an acyl cation (also referred to as an acylium ion) Acyl cations are stabilized by resonance The acyl cation derived from propanoyl chloride is represented by the two resonance forms... 

There are alternatives to the addition-elimination mechanism for nucleophilic substitution of acyl chlorides. Certain acyl chlorides are known to react with alcohols by a dissociative mechanism in which acylium ions are intermediates. This mechanism is observed with aroyl halides having electron-releasing substituents. Other acyl halides show reactivity indicative of mixed or borderline mechanisms. The existence of the SnI-like dissociative mechanism reflects the relative stability of acylium ions. 

Amides, however, tend to cleave in the opposite direction to produce a nitrogen-stabilized acylium ion ... 

A combination of steric and electrostatic factors is presumably decisive with regard to the form of the acid most stable in sulfuric acid solution. The simple protonated form XX of benzoic acid is stabilized by resonance structures sterically prohibited in mesitoic acids. The ortho methyl groups of mesitoic acid would interfere with a coplanar dihydroxymethylene group. On the other hand, the inductive and resonance effects of the methyl groups help stabilize the acylium ion form of mesitoic acid as in the formulae XXI. In the case of 2,4,6-tribromobenzoic acid the steric effect and its abetting electronic effects are not sufficient, and this acid behaves like benzoic acid.17 >177... 

Sometimes acylium ions lose carbon monoxide to generate an ordinary carbonium ion. It will be recalled that free acyl radicals exhibit similar behavior at high temperatures. Whether or not the loss of carbon monoxide takes place seems to depend on the stability of the resulting carbonium ion and on the speed with which the acylium ion is removed by competing reactions. Thus no decarbonylation is observed in Friedel-Crafts reactions of benzoyl chloride, the phenyl cation being rather unstable. But attempts to make pivaloyl benzene by the Friedel-Crafts reaction produce tert-butyl benzene instead. With compound XLIV cyclization competes with decarbonylation, but this competition is not successful in the case of compound XLV in which the ring is deactivated.263... 

Not only water and alcohols, but also other oxygen compounds, are able to react covalently with acylium ions. In the case of hydroxy compounds the product is stabilized by loss of the proton from the hydroxyl group, but certain ethers give an analogous reaction in which the product is stabilized by loss of a carbonium ion.288 Using acetyl chloride with silver perchlorate in nitromethane as the source of acetyl... 

Thus, the best compromises for Boc and Fmoc chemistries seem to be cyclohexyl and 2,4-dimethylpent-3-yl (Dmpn), which is of intermediate stability, and the removal of which by trifluoromethanesulfonic acid with the aid of thioanisole (see Section 6.22) leads to minimal imide formation (see Section 6.13). Points to note are that acidolysis of esters by hydrogen fluoride can lead to fission at the oxy-car-bonyl bond instead of the alkyl-oxy bond, thus generating acylium ions that can react with nucleophiles (see Sections 6.16 and 6.22), and that benzyl esters may undergo transesterification if left in methanol. The side reactions of cyclization (see Section 6.16) and acylation of anisole (see Section 6.22) caused by acylium ion formation do not occur at the side chain of aspartic acid.47-51... 

The cleavage of C5-C4 and formation of C5-C3 suggests that we have a 1,2-alkyl migration of C5 from C4 to a cationic C3. Then the electrons in the C2-C3 bond can move to form a new n bond between C3 and C4, leaving a stabilized acylium ion at C2. After addition of H2O to the acylium ion, an acid-catalyzed electrophilic addition of the resultant carboxylic acid to the alkene occurs to give the final product. 

In Friedel-Crafts acylations, an acyl halide, almost always the chloride, in the presence of a Lewis acid is employed to acylate an aromatic ring. The process is initiated by polarization of the carbon-chlorine bond of the acyl chloride, resulting in formation of a resonance-stabilized acylium ion. 

A Friedel-Crafts acylation is a synthetic method that avoids the problem of rearrangement of the cation. Figure 7-10 illustrates the generation of the electrophile (the acylium ion) from an acid chloride. The presence of resonance stabilizes the acylium ion, and that reduces the possibility of rearrangement. 

In the 40 years since Olah s original publications, an impressive body of work has appeared studying carbocations under what are frequently termed stable ion conditions. Problems such as local overheating and polymerization that were encountered in some of the initial studies were eliminated by improvements introduced by Ahlberg and Ek and Saunders et al. In addition to the solution-phase studies in superacids, Myhre and Yannoni have been able to obtain NMR spectra of carbocations at very low temperatures (down to 5 K) in solid-state matrices of antimony pentafluoride. Sunko et al. employed a similar matrix deposition technique to obtain low-temperature IR spectra. It is probably fair to say that nowadays most common carbocations that one could imagine have been studied. The structures shown below are a hmited set of examples. Included are aromatically stabilized cations, vinyl cations, acylium ions, halonium ions, and dications. There is even a recent report of the very unstable phenyl cation (CellJ)... 

For the purposes of this review, we include probe molecules that can be either directly adsorbed or formed in situ. Examples of the latter case are carbenium ions and related electrophilic species. We will also consider several important heteroatom-substituted carbenium ions and heteroatom analogs of carbenium ions. Acylium ions are the intermediates in Friedel-Crafts acylation reactions (96). The most simple, stable acylium ion is the acetylium ion, 1, and others are formally derived by replacing the methyl group with other R groups. Oxonium ions, formed by alkylation of an ether, resemble carbenium ions but are in fact onium ions in terms of their structures. Their stabilization requires strongly acidic media, and like carbenium ions, oxonium ions have been proposed as intermediates in a... 

The existence of acylium ions in the reactions of acyl halides with Lewis acids has been amply demonstrated88,89, but they have not so far been directly observed in hydrolysis reactions. To achieve direct observation of an acylium ion, it must, at best, be generated into a non-reactive environment if its rate of formation is slow, or be detectable in small concentrations if it is destroyed rapidly. The limiting factors are, therefore, the rate and mechanism of heterolysis and the stability and concentration of the acylium ion formed. In this... 

The reverse reactivity is noted in the acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of the esters. Pyrrole-3-carboxylic esters are hydrolyzed upon dissolution in concentrated sulfuric acid and subsequent dilution with ice. Evidence has been presented indicating that unimolecular acyl—O fission forms the resonance-stabilized pyrrolyl acylium ion (B-77MI30505). 

The structure of alkenoyl cations (unsaturated acylium ions) was studied by Olah et al.658 by NMR spectroscopic methods. They found only a limited contribution from structure 343b and a substantial contribution of the delocalized ketene-like structure 343c, which is due to the ability of the Jt-electrons of the double bond to stabilize the positive charge. Substitution at the (3-carbon increases further the importance of 343c relative to 343a. Diprotonation of propenoyl and isopentenoyl cations studied theoretically [ab initio GIAO-CCSD(T) method]659 has been shown to result in the formation of dication 344 (tertiary carbenium-acylium dication) that is, the positive charges are localized primarily on CO and the (3-carbon. 

The remainder of the mechanism is identical to that of the alkylation of benzene. Because the acylium ion is resonance stabilized, no rearrangements occur. 

The mechanism of Friedel-Crafts acylation (shown next) resembles that for alkylation, except that the electrophile is a resonance-stabilized acylium ion. The acylium ion reacts with benzene or an activated benzene derivative via an electrophilic aromatic substitution to form an acylbenzene. 

Thus, Friedel-Crafts acylation overcomes two of the three limitations of the alkylation The acylium ion is resonance-stabilized, so that no rearrangements occur and... 

The carbocations involved in the alkylation may rearrange. Resonance-stabilized acylium ions are not prone to rearrangement. 

In the mass spectrometer, a ketone or an aldehyde may lose an alkyl group to give a resonance-stabilized acylium ion, like the acylium ion that serves as the electrophile in the Friedel-Crafts acylation (Section 17-11). 

Acylation can be achieved using either acyl halides or acid anhydrides. The product is a ketone. Acyl halides are more reactive than the anhydrides, but still require a Lewis acid catalyst to promote the reaction (Scheme 2.6). The attacking species is the resonance-stabilized acylium ion or the complex. 

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